Not knowing trauma or experiencing or remembering it in a dissociative way is not a passive shutdown of perception or of memory. Not knowing is rather an active, persistent, violent refusal; an erasure, a destruction of form and of representation. The fundamental essence of the death instinct, the instinct that destroys all psychic structure is apparent in this phenomenon. . . . The death drive is against knowing and against the developing of knowledge and elaborating [it].

~Dori Laub, Listening to Trauma

Collective trauma is something that a community experiences together. It is the ways events like the hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters impact the communities that are affected by them and how those communities collectively respond to the event.

Collective trauma can also be seen when we look at racism, misogyny, homo-phobia, xenophobia, able-ism, etc. We see collective trauma in the survivors of genocides and in refugees of extremely authoritarian regimes. The peoples those “otherings” are directed at also experience a collective trauma.

These are traumas that, if you aren’t a part of that community, you don’t experience and may even have trouble understanding. They are also traumas that intersect and many of us are members of multiple “collectives” who experience othering, oppression, and hatred.

A community that experiences a collective trauma is made up of individuals, who each experience and internalize the traumatic event (or attitudes) in their unique ways. How we as an individual may respond to a collective traumatic event is also dependent on our own personal trauma history, our resilience (or lack of), and how our personal and prior collective trauma histories impacted us. How each individual responds to the event also reflects and influences how the collective as a whole responds.

The individual and the collective are intertwined, one really can’t exist without the other.

(To clarify the use the of the word “event” – that word truly only speaks to actual one time things – like hurricanes – and not to the traumatic impact of cultural hierarchies or attitudes or otherings. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have a word for that – so, I’m calling the trauma of cultural hierarchies an “event” even though it is perpetual and most certainly not a one time thing.)

If we look at misogyny (and really all aspects of our patriarchal culture) as a collective trauma, we can begin to have another way into understanding not only how it impacts each of us individually, but also how it perpetuates and insinuates itself within our culture. We can begin to see how misogyny is a key component in what I call Cultural Relational Trauma – how it others women and isolates us from each other and from ourselves. We can see how misogyny impacts all our relationships, with women, men, and non-binary persons. We can see how we collectively perpetuate it through silence, jealousy, and competition.

As women, we have collectively and individually, consciously and unconsciously, bought into the stories of how we are not enough, how we are too much, how we are bad, stupid, untrustworthy, incompetent, frail, fragile, and my all time favorite: evil.

We can see the double-bind our culture, and we ourselves, put us in when we consider sexuality, spirituality, motherhood, womanhood.

We can see how these stories and attitudes have actually caused not only individual traumas (because women are just property after all and can be beaten, raped, used and abused at the whim of their male intimate partner), but have also traumatized us as a collective, leaving us in a place of actually not trusting or believing other women, how we think about what women can and can’t do in the workforce, how we judge other mothers, how we accuse other women of “playing the victim” or the martyr.

We other each other. Even when in almost every way we are the same, and most especially when we have any obvious differences (like the color of our skin, socio-economic status, perceived sexuality, intelligence, education, etc).

And when we other each other, we are buying into, being complicit in and compliant to, and perpetuating our misogynist culture.

Our othering of other women, is how our internalized misogyny shows itself.

Our voices running through our minds about how we are too much or not enough is how our internalized misogyny shows itself.

Our shame, that we carry and that weighs down every fiber of our being, is how our internalized misogyny shows itself.

These are all traumas. These are both the cause and the effect of the trauma. Internalized misogyny is its own trauma that we perpetuate within ourselves and out in our collectives.

I am a firm believer in systems theory. I believe we are all a part of multiple systems, from the micro system of our actual body to our families, to our communities, and further out into the world. When one of us is traumatized, we all feel the ripple effect. This is not only a lateral ripple reaching out to others living in the here and now, this ripple spirals, reach out into the now and also back to our ancestors and forward to the persons yet to come.

The traumas of our ancestors had and continue to have their own ripple effects and collective and internalized misogyny is one of them.

I talk more about all of this in the 12-minute video here. ‘

This essay is the third in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, historical and cultural relational trauma and internalized misogyny. I hope you find it helpful and informative.

We’re all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.

~Liam Callanan, The Cloud Atlas

Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all ofsociety’s rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.

~Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist

We live in a patriarchal culture. The way this culture, our culture, presents itself is one of domination, authoritarianism, and oppression. There is a hierarchy in our culture with able-bodied, CIS, heterosexual, socio-economically abundant men at the top of the hierarchy. Women, are always below men in this hierarchy. White women below white men, black women below black men, Latina women below Latino men, etc.

Men first, then women. There is a hierarchy for women only too, based again on color of skin, able-bodied-ness, sexual orientation and presentation, socio-economic (and marital) status.

It is import to note the hierarchy, and the hierarchy within the hierarchy.

This is the way our culture presents itself.

It is also the way our culture keeps us in line, on our leashes so to speak.

Our culture clearly defines our place in the world for us, and if we dare to step out of that well defined box, well, there are repercussions.

Historically speaking, the repercussions have meant torture, rape, and death.

Depending on the home, these same repercussions may be in effect to this day.

Going back to the hierarchy, it is clear that women are less than men. We are not considered equal. We are below.

This “less-than-ness” has been around for a very long time. It is how patriarchy took hold in the first place – by convincing society in general that women should be subservient, that we are not competent, that we are not to be trusted, that we are evil.

Once these stories became rooted in general society, they insinuated their ways into our homes and families. Once there, they seeped right in our minds, our bodies, our very essence and being.

The perpetuation of misogyny, the hatred of women, is dependent upon these stories. It is dependent upon not only society in general believing that women are inferior; it is also wholly dependent on how we, as women, view other women and ourselves as inferior.

When we begin to consider how our literal survival (as in to continue breathing and having a heartbeat) was dependent on, in the beginning, us not speaking up and out against these stories, and then through the course of time us wholly believing and internalizing these stories, we can see how we became isolated from other women and from our own female self (this is also true for men, however, I am speaking directly to and for women at the moment).

Other writers and coaches call this passing down of the inferiority of women the “mother-wound”. I actually refuse to use that term because I believe it perpetuates the idea that women are responsible for our own oppression and continues to put the mother at the center of the cause of all the ills of the world and our own personal ills. I believe the term itself, “mother-wound,” to be complicit and compliant to our misogynist patriarchal culture.

I have called this a “patriarchal” wound in the past. That name is still relevant and fitting, as it is a wound, or more to the point, a part of the trauma, we as women experience living in our current culture.

And.

I am finding that term to even be a bit sterile and to not take into account, at least not blatantly, the reality that this wounding and trauma has been going on, and being passed down, for hundreds and thousands of years.

I believe we need to remember the context for why we (women) began to believe these stories of our own, and other women’s, inferiority. We need to look at the consequences of what it meant not to believe them for our ancestors. We need to consider how the trauma of watching our mothers and daughters being tortured and murdered impacted us then and still impacts us today.

We need to look at the ancestral trauma that lives within us and how it presents itself as internalized misogyny and disrupts our relationships with other women and with ourselves.

I talk more about all of this in the 12-minute video below

This essay is the second in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, historical and cultural relational trauma and internalized misogyny. I hope you find it helpful and informative.

Psychoanalysis is often about turning our ghosts into ancestors, even for patients who have not lost loved ones to death. We are often haunted by important relationships from the past that influence us unconsciously in the present. As we work them through, they go from haunting us to becoming simply part of our history.

~Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

I spoke on a panel once with a famous new age author/guru in leather pants and she said that the problem with women is that we don’t “speak from our power,” but from a place of victimization. As if the traumas forced upon us could be shaken off with a steady voice- as if we had actual power to speak from.

~Jessica Valenti, Sex Object

Welcome to my new educational essay series On Ancestral Trauma & Internalized Misogyny. Over the next four weeks I’ll be talking about Ancestral, Inter-generational, and Cultural Relational trauma and their various intersections. It is a chance for us to explore how the past – both recent and millennia old – impacts us today, specifically how trauma has been passed on through the generations, particularly mother to daughter, and become curious about how we can begin to process and dislodge these generations old traumas and woundings.

First I believe it is important to start with defining what exactly I am talking about. These are my own definitions, and while there are other therapists who would agree with these definitions and who use this same language, others may re-categorize and re-name the different types of trauma. I don’t think there is only one way to define these things, however so that we are on the same page, so to speak, I will share the definitions of the terms I will be using, as I use and define them.

Even though other therapists, psychologists, and psychological researchers may use different terminology it is universally agreed that there are traumas that come from our ancestral past, those of our own personal lived experience, and those that are from the culture we live in. This series will be focusing on all three, from a historical perspective. You’ll begin to understand what I mean over the next few weeks.

Ancestral Trauma

I define Ancestral Trauma as the biological trauma passed down to us from our blood relatives. This shows up in our DNA and cellular memory. The field of epigenetics broke ground in the reality that trauma is literally passed down through our bloodlines. It has been found that both DNA contributors – as in both the egg and the sperm – can pass on DNA “trauma markers”. It is currently unknown how far back (or rather how far forward) these markers are passed. Current research has only been able to look at three generations worth of data. However my own suspicions (and I’m not alone in these) is that these markers go back as far as any unprocessed was first experienced, so in theory this could literally go back thousands of years.

It is important to note that these trauma markers or “mutable” or changeable – in other words when we process our own traumas and those of our ancestors, these markers “switch off” and then are not available to pass on to the next generations genetically.

Inter-generational Trauma

This is the trauma that is passed on through our family of origin (so for those who are adopted, this is what has been passed on to you by your adopted family as opposed to those in your direct bloodline). This type of trauma is inflicted through action, inaction, and language. There are certain family “habits” or idiosyncrasies that we can see “passed down.” For example, both my sister and I have our mother’s laugh. We also both tend to have her drunken sailor’s mouth.

Not all things passed on inter-generationally are traumatic.

However, we can also look at child abuse as an inter-generational trauma, as more often then not if a parent physically abuses their own children they were also abused as a child. Neglect is the same way. This of course is not always true – which is to say it is possible to also break this cycle of trauma.

We can begin to see these sorts of idiosyncrasies, be they traumatic or relatively benign, when we look at our family trees and see where divorce, known abuse, child loss, early death, etc show up. Also examining our own actual language – the words we use and the the words we don’t – to see different ways this is passed on.

The key to inter-generational trauma, is that while it is part of our lived experience (for example abuse), it is also not originally or wholly ours, which is an important aspect to remember.

Cultural Relational Trauma (CRT)

This trauma is what in inflicted on us by our culture, or in our meta-socialization. It is how our culture encourages us to “Other” those who are not exactly like us. I believe this is where racism, misogyny, ablism, homophobia, classism, etc all stems from. In some ways CRT is from our families of origin also, however the messages come from beyond those who cared (or were supposed to care) for us. It is the messages we receive from the media, from our neighbors, from our religion, from our laws. It is a more wide spread, and therefore more insidious, message that we internalize.

This trauma is also something of our lived experience, but also not ours. It can be unraveled and dislodged, just as lived experience and ancestral traumas can be processed and moved out of our bodies.

Internalized Misogyny

This, in a nutshell, is our hatred of women as women ourselves. Men can be misogynists, but they can’t have internalized misogyny. When we internalize the messaging of our culture and or family of origin, it is messages about ourselves that we are internalizing.

Internalized misogyny shows up in the ways we judge other women and also the way, as women, we judge ourselves. It is the holding ourselves and others to essentially mythological beauty standards presented by our culture. It is the way we judge other mothers and their parenting, and yet do not offer support for mothers to be “better” parents. It is the way we shame other women, and ourselves, for being too much this and not enough that.

Internalized misogyny is the way we unconsciously do the dirty work of our culture – it is how we are complicit in and how we perpetuate the subjugation of women. It is also part of our ancestral and inter-generational trauma, as well as our cultural relational trauma.

It too is learned, and I firmly believe what can be learned can also be unlearned.

All of these different traumas influence and impact us. Sometimes consciously and mostly unconsciously. These traumas are part of our “Shadow Self” and when we bring them into the light, examine them, and begin to understand them, we are able to then begin to make conscious choices about not passing them on to future generations.

I talk more about all of this in the 10-minute video below.

This essay is the first in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, and cultural relational traumas and internalized misogyny. I hope you find it helpful and informative.

The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

~Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

~Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

As we move through the close of 2017, as we move from the ever growing darkness into the expanding light here in the northern hemisphere, I want to take some time to speak about trauma, how it lives within us, how it impacts us, and what all trauma truly is.

You may be thinking, what a depressing topic to talk about as we are supposed to be celebrating and jolly. My response to this is, that what better time to talk about our shadow parts, what better time to bring what is hidden within us into light, as we are celebrating new beginnings, awakenings, and births?

And so, let’s talk about trauma. Because it lives within all of us. Whether it be trauma from our own lived experiences, trauma from our ancestors, or trauma from our oppressive culture, we each carry trauma in our bodies and psyches and spirits. So today, let’s explore the different types of trauma that we each have within us to better understand what I mean when I say “we all have trauma” and so we can all better understand our own Self.

TYPES OF TRAUMA

Lived Experience Trauma. This is the trauma that lives within us as a result of the traumatic events we personally experienced in our lives. It can be chronic (multiple events, like ongoing childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse by a caregiver or later in life an intimate partner, neglect, living in poverty, etc) or acute (one time events like a surgery, car accident, a one time assault like a rape or mugging). This trauma is based in our own personal history and story. We may remember or not remember events, and either way they occurred during our lifetime.

Ancestral and Inter-generational Traumas. These are the traumas that are passed down to us from our family. Ancestral trauma, in my definition, is what is passed down through our bloodline – it appears in the epigenetic markers of our DNA and our cellular memory. Inter-generational trauma is passed down by our family too, however it is passed down through actions. The impacts of a trauma experienced by a mother for example would include how she was able to care for her children, and could impact attachment bonds. Additionally inter-generational trauma can also be passed down through language (we all have specific “trigger” words that either we don’t want to be associated with or we desperately do want to be associated with and our reactions to these words influence our own actions and thoughts; these words are often passed down through generations).

Cultural Relational Trauma. This is the trauma of living in a white-supremicist, misogynist, ablist, homophobic, capitalist, patriarchal culture. It is a trauma that lives in all of us, but to varying degrees. It is the trauma we need to explore when considering intersectionality and remembering that not all of us are having the same experience in our world.

All of us carry at least two of the three traumas in our own bodies and being : inter-generational and ancestral trauma and cultural trauma. Most of us also have our own lived experience traumas coursing through us too.

Having an understanding of these different types of trauma allows us to begin to understand what is impacting us, what our triggers are, how some of the ways we view world are from our own experiences and also much of how we view the world is from those who came before us.

As we are able to unravel and decipher our traumas, we are able to dismantle and process them out of our bodies and being. This is intense work and cannot be done alone in a vacuum. It is work that needs to be done in community, with some parts worked through in settings with only one other person and others in larger groups.

We are relational beings and trauma impacts our ability to relate with each other. As we learn more about trauma and our own trauma we can also begin to understand how others are also impacted and influenced by trauma.

Additionally the main focus of my individual work is trauma and utilizing trauma informed embodiment with my clients. If you are looking for an individual therapist, you can learn more about me and my individual therapy work here.

And finally, I facilitate a free online group on Facebook where we explore trauma, grief, embodiment,and their intersections. It is called Trauma Informed Embodiment and you can join us right here.

How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole. ~C.G. Jung

I wrote last week about the process of individuation, what it is, what it means, and if it’s even necessary. This week I want to dig a bit deeper into this part of our human evolution, part of what it may look like, and why it it is important for the shifting and changing of our patriarchal culture.

To be honest, our culture doesn’t want us to move through this process. It doesn’t want us to know our own minds, to be self-aware, or to bring our unconscious and shadow into consciousness and light. Because when we do this, when we move from a state of unconscious reaction to a place of mindful being, well, our authoritarian culture starts to fall apart.

As you know, I deeply believe that the personal is political; that we need both self-actualization AND social liberation to become truly free.

How can we begin this process? How can we begin to take off the cultural leashes that have been put on us? How can we shift from a place of unconscious reaction to mindful being?

A possible place to begin is by unearthing, examining and then releasing from our being all those stories we each have about being too much, being not enough, being ashamed of who we are, being ashamed of our very existence.

Those stories we’ll all been fed since birth. By our families. By our communities. By our culture.

Those stories that got into our skin and sinew and bone.

Those stories that keep us quiet, small, focused on pleasing and caring for others while sacrificing our own pleasure and care.

Releasing these stories is a life long process. We release them in layers. I think of this work in terms of a three dimensional spiral that we move up and down, in and out of. We each have many aspects to these stories we all hold, unique to our own lived experience and ancestral history.

As we unearth, examine and release each piece, however, we are creating space for different ways of being. As we bring each of these stories out of our unconscious and into our consciousness, we can mindfully shift the ways we are in the world and with ourselves.

It isn’t a direct path. There is no lock-step prescribed “right” way of doing this work.

And.

There are some pretty common tools and processes that we can all use to connect to these stores and move them out of our being.